Apple Face ID

Submission 14,776

Part of a series on iPhone. [View Related Entries]

About

Apple Face ID refers to a series of jokes and memes made in response to Apple's facial recognition technology integrated into the iPhone X. The joke's refer to the company's marketing and announcements about the security applications and development of the function.

Origin

On September 12th, 2017, the Apple consumer technology company announced the iPhone X, touting the smart phone's state-of-the-art facial recognition software."Face ID" allows users to unlock their phones and use other faces by looking at their phones, the phone then verifies the user's identity by analyzing their face.

Spread

Shortly after the event, people on Twitter began posting jokes about the announcements. Twitter^[1] user @LetMicahDown posted a gif of actor Jack Nicholson devilishly nodding in approval with the caption "The CIA during this Face ID announcement." The post (shown below, left) received more than 1,400 retweets and 1,600 likes in two days.

Others made jokes about the Game of Thrones character Arya Stark, who frequently wears other people's faces on the series. Twitter^[2] user @SuperSaf posted a gif of Arya and the caption "Apple, 'Face ID can't be fooled easily.' Arya Stark, 'We'll see about that.'" The post (shown below, right) received more than 6,300 retweets and 10,400 likes in 48 hours.

That day, professional wrestler John Cena, who is known for waving his hands in front of his face and saying, "You can't see me," tweeted^[4] about the face ID. He captioned the post "Sooo #iPhoneX about #FaceID …ummmmm …. what do I do?" The post (shown below) received more than 330,000 retweets and 560,000 likes.

On September 14th, Redditor ^[3] FuzzyDickle posted an image of basketball player Michael Jordan with a black eye on the /r/DankMemes subreddit. The picture is captioned "When u get jumped but can't call the cops because iPhone X won't recognize ur face." The post (shown below) received more than 29,000 points (90% upvoted) and 480 comments in less than 24 hours.

Several media outlets covered the emergence of memes about face ID, including TIME,^[5] The Daily Dot,^[6] Harper's Bazaar^[7] and more. On September 12th, Twitter^[8] published a Moments page on the Arya Stark memes.